DE.

The average for strikers Mowbray has brought in (Samuel, Nuttall, Antonsson, Armstrong) is about a 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 ratio. Then you've got the likes of Brereton who has only scored 1 league goal in 26 appearances, but remove him as an outlier and you have strikers who are roughly scoring 7 or 8 goals a season. Although most of the time they are not really playing as strikers, so... Mowbray. What a character.

There's a possibility the EFL will say no to anymore extension for a new bidder, although I find that extremely unlikely. They'll do everything in their power to keep Bolton afloat and so they should, so I expect an announcement to be made later on that Bolton have been given an extension. Of course that doesn't solve their issue of there being no money to pay the players and other staff on Friday. Are these new bidders going to be able or willing to stump up that cash? The administrators have made it clear that there is no money left to run the club, so whilst FV probably have a structure in place to begin immediate payments I doubt the new bidders will.

How much of my post did you read? Because I literally said "I know you aren't saying this" right after the part you highlighted so I can only assume you got that far as this obviously was not my interpretation of your point! The stats are what they are, they can be interpreted a number of ways but they are the only real indicator we have. You can choose to ignore them and that's fine, but I do put some value in them as I don't think Mowbray has changed his style much since he arrived. New team mates, sure, but that will only matter if performances and the style of play is significantly different from the last time he was here. Remember that when TM arrived he put us on a trajectory which under a full season would have seen us safe and roughly on the same points he collected last season and likely will do this season as well. I don't think circumstances are as different as you believe.

FV have been kicking the tyre down the road for so long now that I really question their authenticity. Anderson is obviously a pain to deal with but it's been literally months now. A new bidder coming in at the 11th hour is always questionable as well imo, why not sooner? And how long is it going to take to go through the process of due diligence? Or is this new bidder coming in at the last minute hoping all due diligence and fit & proper tests will be fast-tracked through with less detail so that they can sneak in with less than solid credentials... I expect by 5pm today Bolton will have been given another extension but as a fan I'd still be very concerned for the future.

I don't think we bought Gallagher with the intent of him being a defensive player. He's a £5m striker so I absolutely refute the idea that if he defends well then that is good enough. It isn't. I know you aren't saying that but for me this concept of him winning aerial duels and being a good defensive player is only a minor and debateable positive. If we wanted to defend better than we bring in better defenders and defensive midfielders. Strikers are brought in to score and assist goals. If they help defend then that's a bonus, but they will always be judged on how many they score and create. As for stretching the stats being muddling, no, I wouldn't say so. It's clear that Gallagher's goalscoring dropped off significantly as soon as Mowbray arrived and has continued in that vein so far this season. It suggests that the way Mowbray plays isn't conductive to Gallagher being a goalscoring threat, although the only time he has been a goalscoring threat was under Owen Coyle in a team that lost most weeks, so, unless we discount his whole career thus far and wipe the slate clean it might just be that he can't operate well as an offensive player in a team that defends properly. Ultimately stats are just stats and don't tell the whole story. They only provide an indicator and thus far this season it's an accurate indicator. I very much hope it changes, as otherwise we've spent £12m combined on two strikers who aren't contributing to goals or assists, which would obviously be hugely concerning.

A different beast I'm afraid. Coyle's gung ho style meant we scored plenty of goals but conceded a ton at the back too. This was technically true of Mowbray last season but the goals were largely concentrated around Graham and Dack, not our wide players. This season we aren't anywhere near as effective as an attacking force but there are signs of improving defensively. Under Coyle Gallagher scored 10 in 31 matches, with 3 assists. Under Mowbray it was 1 goal in 13 appearances with 1 assist. Overall when working with Mowbray Gallagher has 18 apps, 1 goal, 1 assist. So, it would take quite a turnaround of form for him to get to 6 let alone 10 goals. Not saying it's impossible but there is no history of Gallagher scoring or creating goals under this manager. Although the same could be said for more or less every player in our team save for Graham and Dack.

In terms of net we only have one extra defender, not defenders. Raya and Mulgrew out, Walton, Tosin and Cunningham in. A stronger backline yes, but I don't think anybody expected that he meant shipping out Raya & Mulgrew when he made that promise. It doesn't really matter though. Managers will say whatever they need to say to appease fans, so it's a case of accepting that words mean nothing and actions determine whether a manager works out or fails. If Mowbray does well this season I don't give a toss what he promised or didn't promise. If he fails then it'll be because of his actions, not his words.

Yeah, but only after we had already been beaten by Charlton and he told us in July that our defence "was alright". The Mulgrew/Cunningham stuff was all clearly last minute and I do not believe it was planned beyond the last day or two of the window. Tosin was our only defensive reinforcement until Charlton exposed our issues once again and forced Mowbray into a decision. We look OK now but an injury to Cunningham means we have Bell as our only proper LB option if Williams is now a CB, and if Williams/Tosin/Lenihan get injured then we're down to Grayson and Platt as backup. So I don't really buy a defence of Mowbray on this one. Defence looks good for now, but I'll see how the first half of the season plays out before deciding if he really fulfilled his promise on sorting out our defence.

It's obviously great for PR and helps keep the fans onside. Obviously not so much when you promise something at those fan evenings and then backtrack, but that's another story.

Anderson has been on Talksport telling Jim White that the parties are back at the table and he expects a deal to be concluded tonight. We've heard that before.

https://www.bwfc.co.uk/news/2019/august/a-statement-on-behalf-of-paul-appleton-joint-administrator-for-bolton-wanderers/ The administrator basically confirming it is FV or bust. Our good friend Alan Nixon has been peddling rumours of a second buyer but it appears to be bullshit. Shocking I know.

A post from somebody on the Bolton forum who they seem to think is ITK:

5PM tomorrow is the deadline, same as Bury. They will then receive a 14 day notice. That isn't the major issue though. The problem is that the administrators have said there is no money left and they will begin shutting the club down on Wednesday if there is no progress. Bolton could well be gone before the EFL's 14 day notice even expires.

The atgames system is kind of notorious for being poor quality to be honest, but yeah it's just a flash chip essentially so the type of mods you'd do on a normal MD wouldn't work on that. There's a Mega Drive mini coming out in October which will blow the atgames system out of the water. I've got it (secretly) on pre-order, but it's £70 so not exactly cheap. I think most non-Japanese asian consoles are also PAL, but the cartridge shape is different so you need to alter any non-Asian MD to accept the slightly wider cartridge shape. The Mega Drive 2 itself was produced in both NTSC and PAL variants, but it has a totally different motherboard to the MD1 (and is generally considered inferior). Modding a MD2 is totally different to a MD1 as it doesn't have the JP1/2/3/4 jumpers. Most of the mods I've seen use the reset button to switch region, and a new LED light which changes colour depending on the region you've selected. I definitely prefer the MD1 method!

Not too dissimilar to the Rothwell situation. A player he signed and who could have absolutely huge resale value with a good run in the side, showing TM in a very good light as far as player recruitment goes, but instead he's relegated to the bench whilst we try to shoehorn a striker on the right and a 35 year old on the left who, despite clearly still being a very talented player, has no resale or long-term value for the club. I don't think any of Mowbray's decisions are down to appeasing the fans. He's just a manager who lacks courage a lot of the time and sticks to his guns even when things blatantly are not working (Bennet at RB, Evans/Smallwood, strikers out wide, Mulgrew at CB). Any changes he makes are usually because his hand is forced or it becomes so obvious and the mistakes go on for so long that the pressure becomes too much. It took until March last season to drop a clearly underperforming Mulgrew and he still started our first game of this season. Travis was only introduced after Smallwood was suspended and results immediately improved with him in the side. Similarly Rothwell only got into the starting line up right at the end of the season when results were so bad that there was little to lose from throwing him in. Now he's back on the bench. History unfortunately shows that Mowbray is not a manager who learns from his mistakes. He seems absolutely convinced his vision is the way to go, despite that vision ultimately costing him his job at WBA, Celtic, Boro and Coventry. I believe history will ultimately repeat itself here at some point, and it's a real shame as I do believe Mowbray has a lot of good points as a manager. He's just too rigid and unable to adapt to change things that aren't working.

The brinksmanship may have gone too far. Even if all parties get back to the table the clock is now ticking and from tomorrow Bolton will be on notice as being expelled from the league. It sounds like both the EFL and the administrators have run out of patience and unless something is sorted out by Wednesday the club will begin to shut down. Once that process starts it will make things far more difficult for any prospective owner coming in.

Nope never played that one - is it similar to Streets of Rage?

I definitely want to acquire a Japanese MD one of these days, but I'm already on thin ice having ordered two more of "those damn machines" from eBay ("why the hell do you need four of the same console?" - not placated by my explanations of different motherboard revisions) so I'll probably have to wait a while the Japanese MD is definitely the best looking of the lot imo, although I also really like the design of the Mega Drive 1. I can't really remember how region locking works with US/European systems and Japanese games, but you're right in that if you just file the corners of the opening port it will allow the cartridge to fit. I actually don't think Japanese games had any region coding so unless the system itself locked the game out it wouldn't be an issue. There was a Monster Hunter game on the MD - Monster Hunter IV I believe, and I think I read it's being included on the Sega Mega Drive mini that's coming out (translated of course). The construction worker game sounds like Hammerin' Harry but that was an NES release rather than a MD release, so probably not.

It's really looking bleak now. Administrators saying there's no money left to keep trading, so the club will begin to be wound up on Wednesday unless somebody budges before then. It's almost certain that the EFL will serve Bolton their 14 day notice tomorrow at this point.

IMV it's Rovers who have been found out, not Dack. Even the best players can be man marked out of a game if surrounded by team mates who aren't doing anything useful. By the looks of things our closest attempt yesterday was from Derrick Williams (again). Says it all really.

I imagine almost every manager in this division would love to have Dack in their team. I've always been 100% against selling or dropping him as he has proven time and time again that he is a difference maker, and we have very few of those in our team. His form has undoubtedly declined in the past eight months or so but for the most part that has coincided with the entire team losing form so I'm not going to point the finger squarely at him. It shouldn't be up to one player to carry the team, but all too often it has been him who we've looked to when we need to score a goal, whether that's through an assist (usually to Graham) or getting on the scoresheet himself. He's working hard but he's ending up in positions where he can't be as effective as he should be. Mowbray needs to find a way to keep Dack closer to the opponent's penalty box rather than the centre circle, whilst maintaining our defensive solidity.

Rowett seems to be a bit like Eddie Howe where he was very effective at one club but not so much at others. I think he could potentially still do a decent job somewhere but no doubt his stock has fallen in recent times.

That should be well enough to get a very nice sounding soundbar tbh, I'd keep an eye on hotukdeals as soundbars often come up on there for good prices. I'm guessing you're talking about the atgames mini MD? That's just a 'system on a chip' so even if you did open it I don't think there would be much you could do to it. I think some of the asian MD's were region free by default so would play any games, however I'm guessing it would still default to 50hz for PAL games so a 50/60hz switch would still need to be modded onto it for full affect, Not 100% on that though as I've never owned one!

He's an athlete so could probably do a job for a lower to mid table L1 club. We've already seen in Smallwood what a decent top six level L1 midfielder looks like and he was streets ahead of Lowe in every respect.

That will essentially be Mowbray's epitaph when he eventually departs. There's a decent manager in there but he needs to take a trip to Oz to find his courage.